The Prune Proprietary
by Quillon42
Summary: Technically a crossover between the TV Walking Dead and the Comics Walking Dead, as Comics Carol finds a new reason to live, specifically through the arrival of a certain TV-Version medic newcomer. Even happier happenings (seemingly, for once in this walker-y world) occur incidentally while these two form their warm bond together.


THE PRUNE PROPRIETARY

(OR, BOB AND CAROL AND DEAD AND ALICE)

By Quillon42

Hovering inches away from the lovely young woman with so much to offer—yet without any self-esteem whatsoever to show for it—looming there was the lifeless, undead shell of a once-someone, a perpetration of a person but not the real article, the ghoul of a girl with her gripping fingers and her dripping teeth. Before the beautiful yet despondent lady was a grotesque, dead woman walking, an unbeing, unlike Carol.

"I don't really have anyone to talk to," the latter started, sharing the sanity (or lack thereof) of Rick and Michonne in addressing someone who wasn't really there. "So I figured I'd introduce myself."

As mademoiselle monster came ever closer, Carol mentally corrected herself; she really did have some others with whom she could pass the time. The aforementioned officer and his adoring wife were always there for her—at least for just so much, as neither Deputy Grimes nor his lady Lori were down with Carol's innocent yet pitiful proposition, some time before. The bereft blonde, she'd loved Lori and Rick so much, she said she wanted to marry them both.

Literally. It was a mite offputting to the pair…so thereafter, Lori for one became happy to have contact with Carol only during their occasional movie nights, from then on.

Of course, this wasn't enough for the willowy widow. She'd lost so many, from even warmer friends such as Donna to her louse of a spouse. Carol now felt an absence, a lack of a living person's presence, someone who needed her—even if only to use and/or abuse her, as her husband did so dastardly, so many times before.

Surrounded now more by fences than family, more by the threat of a deadly Gubernatorial trespass than the treat of dear glorious peace, Carol became desperate. Needy to find a neighbor to whom she could talk, with whom she could commune…and that horny hayseed Billy Greene, twenty minutes previous, he just didn't cut it.

Craving the contact of another, she leaned in ever closer.

"I really hope you like…"

And then, here, in this reality, she pulled back of a sudden.

Pulled back at making eye contact, meters further along, with another penitentiary constituent, one with whom she shared more than the commonality of irises and pupils that still pulsed in their aliveness (which was more than one could say for Carol's expired acquaintance, here, right in front of her).

She was staring back at her right now, in fact: the one with whom Carol had the most in common—the one about whom the former homemaker and former wife and still-current mother had completely forgotten, in her forays for affection.

And the innocent absence of understanding in the girl's eyes—in her daughter Sophia's very eyes—made the lady remember one of her most critical roles in this ravage-recycled society, made her come instantly out of her cheerless catatonia.

[RRRRRUUUUUUHHHHHH]

Carol might have been nonetheless nommed on by the dilapidating dame nearby, the latter lunging for the former a second later…if

[SKKKRRRUUUNNNCCCHHHHHH]

an intervening crutch hadn't careened in, the edge of the ambulatory instrument catching the revenant by an eye socket and wedging itself completely through, shunting brutally into the thing's brain and bringing it to a new, low gradation of expiration.

As an unscratched, unbitten Carol straggled along the cemented floor of the prison playyard, she ever so glad after all not to have been masticated upon by that exanimate inmate, another female voice sounded from above her.

"Damn it!" cried the beleaguered Nurse Warren, as she sloughed the crutch from the cranium of her prized project. Alice gathered up the bloodied implement into her hands, then took another glance at the downed undead and chucked it bitterly.

Under her breath, so that even Carol couldn't hear her:

"Who'm I going to get for my groom now?!"

In actuality, it might have been the case that the lonely, suicidal survivor might have heard the nurse, but for a duo of distractions: for one, her own and only child, who gave those glances her way a second ago to snap her mother out of her slide toward self-termination…

…and for the other, the dapper young man who came cruising in through the front prison gate just a couple of minutes past. This visitor, one-third gawky but two-thirds rugged, he was a man as dark and handsome as Tyreese—one third Ty's size, yes, but seemingly six times his stature, given that this stranger strode in from the unliving outdoors all bravely on nothing but his own lonesome steam.

Really, it seemed now as if Carol would have someone new to talk to…and perhaps from there do more than just talk.

The newcomer looked all around his surroundings with naïve relief and appreciation, then gave a sincere grin when approached first and foremost by a woman looking to welcome him ever so warmly.

About an hour later, after Carol personally gave new guy Bob Stookey a tour of the correctional facility and the community that kept it going, she took the man aside to converse idly and kindly in a yard where she could watch Sophia playing with Carl once again.

In the course of the conversation, the lady learned of Bob's strength in pharmaceuticals, as an ex-Army Medic…as well as his weakness by way of other, baser intoxicants. It appeared that while the man was never taken down by any demons of this new, disease-ridden nation…he could be brought low on occasion, specifically by spirits of a certain brand.

"Whenever my world went to crap, before all this," Bob said, waving his hand all around, to signify all of the surrounding degeneration of Georgia, "I'd…bottle myself up, in more ways than one. Hide away from it all, as much as I could…hail a 'cab' to take me away.

"…As in 'cabernet,' that is," he added a second later, to answer Carol's quizzical look as to what "cab" meant in the context to which he was referring.

The hour following seemed to flow even more freely, as the two continued to talk and discover that they had more in common than at first impression. Each was very soft spoken, not very alpha male or female; each found comfort in a destructive routine, and even in this apocalypse resisted any sort of alteration from it. At least for Carol, the worst aspect of it was behind her, as the awful abuse had ended long ago.

Now, really it was as if she had lately been suffering more from neglect; she had gone from the extreme of too much attention by way of interrupting fists and insults flung into her face, to the other polarity of apparent ostracism from everyone she held dear.

But what of Bob, and his relations with others…?

"Aww, don't go askin' me that," he said with a smile. "One of the last involvements I had, it was with a woman, name of Mary. …Let me tell you, as bad as I've drunk…she's eaten, much more and far worse."

Carol wondered what on this un-earth that meant, and so she'd asked, and so he told her, and so she wished thereafter she hadn't wondered about knowing.

"I think at least one of her sons, he came off even hungrier than his own mama did…"

Upon hearing said son's name, Carol's mind reeled free-associatively.

"Gareth…wasn't that the name of one of the people involved with some Eighties synth bands, like Depeche Mode and shit?"

Bob could only give the old girl a frazzled look at this. She'd be better off addressing emo matters with someone else, like probably Glenn, at least ever since the impulsive young git slowed on down after meeting Maggie. She couldn't stop thinking about the plausible connection, though.

_Like, seriously…if that might be the same Gareth…does that mean that Depeche Mode are cannibals?!_

Some lyrics from _Black Celebration_ slipped through her morose mind that moment.

"_Let me see you stripped, down to the bone…"_

_Oh my God_, she thought in abject horrification._ It all fits._

From the south just then a slight breeze kicked up, as it became late afternoon. Carol instinctively clung to Bob for warmth, and he in turn placed a calming hand upon her forearm.

"Hey, what's that?" she asked, motioning towards the small, mauve flask in the wanderer's waistband. It looked remotely familiar to her, but for the unlife of her she couldn't quite place it.

Bob glanced down a second, then chuffed a small laugh. "Huh, yeah, I was gonna tell you 'bout this. …

"…Some crazy-haired, wild-eyed fella, wearing your local colors…" and at this he pointed to the prison walls, "he happened by on the road I was traveling. At seeing me, he seemed to wheeze out his last breath and pass on out.

"I brought him to a minute later, so he wouldn't sleep through any…dental treatments by no 'roamers,' as y'all call 'em. Said his name was Andrew, and that he was much obliged."

"Anyway, long story short, we found a trade was in order, given our respective circumstances. I gave up some cough syrup I had on me, which I was plannin' to use for a weak-ass late-night fix…

"…Prison Break, in turn, gave me this little wonder…said they called it Pruno in the pen."

He turned the crude container over in his hands, watched the contents swish around from liquid to the very dregs. "It's prison wine, basically…made from fruit and candy and milk what have you…all things drinkable that are sour, sweet, bitter…whatever one can take down and still live to sit or stand up tomorrow. I've always heard tell of it…always wanted to know what it's all about."

Carol looked over at her benchmate, stared into his eyes a luscious second.

"…

"…Well?

"How is it?"

Bob looked down at his worn, worn loafers and smiled. He then matched his inmate's gaze.

"…You know, my pretty lady…Andy said that, going down, the Pruno hits you something fierce.

He advised me, first time It take it down, to chase it with somethin'."

He moved his parched lips closer to her own quivering ones. "…I just figured that, maybe 'f I _preceded_ the prune, with a little somethin'-somethin'…it'd go down all the smoother."

And then the two operated with said lips with a famished ferocity, the same ravenous intensity with which so many undead semi-someones had engaged all this time with their teeth. In the course of it, Bob had lost interest momentarily in the prison hooch, having found that consuming from Carol was far more engrossing and satisfying.

When the two eventually took off to "get a cell," as a few onlookers had joinkgly catcalled to them, in their privacy the manic medic sated his appetite by masticating upon the most gratifying MREs he was ever issued, courtesy of Carol's gracious sexual generosity. In short, the man went down on his lady in much the same way Michonne did on Tyreese, in these comic pages—much to the horror of Sophia's mother, who had watched from behind a cracked wall.

Carol now thought of this in the back of her mind, while Bob was pleasing her, and the role reversal of the present transaction made the sensations she was feeling now that much sweeter. So enveloped in her ecstasy, was she, that the lady in her satisfaction lay sleeping ever soundly not thirty minutes later, Bob's ever-intensifying labial adulations having lulled her to the calmest slumber she'd experienced in as long as she could recall.

When the young newcomer was assured by his amorous cellmate's snoring that she was indeed so peacefully put out, he set out forward, taking his small lavender flask in hand. Specifically he made for one of the side yards so that he could celebrate his first tryst since the lurkers done lurched into power in the Peach State.

A couple swigs and a few swaggers later and Bob already found himself floating a bit, the influence of the prison prune that overpowering. He wasn't aware, of course, as that wacked-out escapee Andrew hadn't told him, but there was an entire gullet's gamut distilled into that booze—everything from medicine to moonshine, all poured inside that piddling jug. It overtook the medic, stymied him such that he didn't even see it, couldn't even feel the horror…

…of the impact of his shin against the ambulance fender flaring out from immediately around the corner.

The "Gah!" emanating from Bob upon this accident was minor in comparison to the "GAH!" that arrived from his beholding of the bridegroom mentioned by one Miss Warren several paragraphs back.

As he rounded the back of the vehicle to take it in full, sights and smells alike, the intrepid medic did all he could to hold in his bile, as well as all the varied contents of the potent combo he'd been knocking back these past several minutes.

In short, it was Stevens—the very same village physician who worked his medical magic all over Woodbury. The same one who felt all kinds of things for Alice, while the two were working their grim, dismal rounds in the town, seemingly nonstop. The same who never knew that, at least in this reality, the young nurse reflected his sentiments right back—but she always kept matters of that sort submerged in the midst of their professional parleying.

As the sloshed Stookey was the first in this clink-community to discover now, Nurse Warren had made a most furtive foray back into Woodbury, shortly after she made her initial escape with Rick and his crew. Did so under the pretense of smuggling an ambulance containing a wealth of equipment and other helpful, healthful materials. Who knew, beyond this, that the lady was also retrieving something even more vital, at least in the context of her own heart's condition.

Honestly, Miss Alice had lost a significant part of herself when she saw Stevens go down. But just as she recovered that one female roamer specimen, to retain for her studies…so would she also have, just like the Gov with his overly pale shade of a little girl Penny, a secret special somebody whom she would keep to herself, hold onto with a hope in her heart. It was in particular a hope that, should all this atrocity of unliving unravel, and the world again become something remote to what it once was, perhaps one of its revenants could revert to the man he was previously.

For nothing else, Alice hoped that she could, at least, marry the turned Stevens to her undead female subject, then look on lovingly and live vicariously through the bride. Yes, it was not only Carol who entertained distorted designs of matrimony in this mirthless prison haven.

"Y…yer lookin' mi…might…mighty hungry, my good man," managed Bob, after he collected himself a bit, albeit doing so quite under the influence. In his stupor, the newcomer acknowledged the Walker-Stevens with significantly less guardedness and aghast than he would have if sober, despite his abject startling a minute ago. So wine-awash was the man, in fact, that here in Alice's absence (as the nurse was this instant tending impromptu to a sniffly Baby Judy, and thus left her most prized possession unattended in the night), that said man took it upon himself to share a slurp from his purple potable with the creature, he hefting the drink to the undeadly entity without any care for his safety.

"H…here."

And then

[TRRPPP]

It chanced that Bob brashly fell over himself, the Stevens-shambler lunging forward for him from the back of the ambulance at the same time. Anyone who could have been here to witness would have thought for sure, in this moment, that the goofy newbie would have been a goner for certain.

But then an odd, unlikely thing happened.

With the same nigh-impossible improbability as, say, almost every survivor scoring a perfect headshot against every undead adversary, several seasons straight (goodness knows that no one has witnessed anything like that happening in the quartet of TWD TV seasons thus far), Bob succeeded, before his booze-bombed body hit the ground, in wedging his wine-flask awkwardly but squarely into the maw of Dead Doctor Stevens, the creature driven backward onto his ambulance cot and the contents of the thistle-hued bottle emptying themselves entirely down the back of the thing's throat.

"RRMMMRRRRR," moaned the ex-Stevens as the Pruno pushed its way through his disease-wracked system. Another minute, and both Bob and his necrotic neighbor in the ambulance fell still for a spell.

By the time Judy improved and Alice rushed on back to her red-and-white rescue ride, the sky had brightened from licorice black to the liberty blue of dawn. The lady halted and huffed at reaching the vehicle, looked down disdainfully at the hung-over dope at her feet…

…then threw her hands to her cheeks in shock at the spectacle at live flesh, from inside the ambulance, raising hands in turn to wish her a good morning.

A short stretch later, at what must have been about eleven a.m. by anyone's estimation.

"And so he's just _alive_ again?!"

At Carol's incredulous inquiry, Bob only looked at his new love for a second, then shrugged and grinned sheepishly as he reached over and held her closer.

While he watched Alice and the good, got-better Doctor strolling around, arm-in-arm to the astonishment of all in the vicinity: "I'm tellin' ya, hon'…that stuff Andy gave me…s' a regular proprietary panacea. Cures everything from worries to…walker-itis."

Carol looked at Bob, then over at the intact, breathing beaus who were now Alice and Stevens, then back at Bob again in disbelief.

"Then we'd…we'd better find that jail-jumping fucker…bring him back here and get him to make us some more!"

As it turned out, Alice was so ecstatic to have a living Stevens again in her life—a man whom, like most loves, she didn't realize she appreciated and adored until he was gone. She was so overjoyed, in fact, that she decided she wanted to have and to hold him most matrimonially.

So it was that, once the prison chapel was cleared out a few days later, and Hershel managed to clean off the collar and frock of the turned chaplain, he assumed it to unite the nurse and doctor in holy wedlock—the second such ceremony since that for Glenn and Maggie, but this one solemnized all the more in light of its extraordinary circumstances. Guests by this point were still looking on in amazement to note that a man who was hours ago "walking" in the deadest, deadliest sense was now wedding a woman to become one living flesh and blood with her.

In one of the pews closest to the couple, Carol gave a glance to her own new love Bob Stookey standing next to her, squeezed his hand tenderly. In turn, he rubbed the top of her back lovingly, then leaned over slowly to her ear to whisper.

"We really gotta score us some more of that sauce."

EPILOGUE

No one in the penitentiary's perimeter was more elated than Alice as of now, as her life was more fulfilled with the man she loved all harkened back from the undead and hitched to her side.

But something else was gnawing at her, more than any nonliving nuisance ever could with decomposing choppers. She flagged Rick down, in the course of his deputy duties, and told him.

"Yer sayyyin' thet the Govvner wants'a yuse our chahhpel to do _whut?!_" he asked (and, as with Bob, this was the TV Rick, with his at-least-sometimes-strained perpetration at a Southern accent).

"I was there, Rick," said Alice, the newlywed hugging her forearms to herself in anxiety. "While I was stealing Stevens and the ambulance with all its stuff…I overheard the man and his goons talking…discussing a détente, in our prison's most hallowed grounds…the Governor was supposedly going to engage in peace talks to us, all while using the chapel for his turned-daughter Penny's first Holy Communion."

The entire ensemble appeared completely bowled over by this. Carol and Bob exchanged uncertain glances, and even Little Asskicker, from her baby caddy, gave that same "Dafuq?!" look she gave a baseball-cap-wearing asshole a week ago, the reader's time, when the latter motioned threateningly to break her infant neck like the total piece of feces that he was.

Rick, in turn, could only give that patented stoned-narcoleptic stare, out into the distance, for about a good thirty seconds. As he continued to glare out unto the horizon, the denizens of the Deep South dungeon began to gather all around him, a premonition surfacing amongst the people that the hero was about to utter an important statement.

The man sniffed, turned his attention toward the pen's armory.

"They're gonna feel prehhhtty steuuupid, when they find out," he said, as he took a couple steps in the direction of the weapons and riot gear.

Just then the shadow of a lone figure sprouted upon the yard's soil. Within seconds a soldier literally dropped in, via parachute, the man tumbling down then standing up stock, just meters away from Rick, the incoming newcomer's hair on his face and scalp even more crimson than that of any siren of the Marvel Universe.

And then this man, Sergeant Abraham Ford—he ever so relieved to have been able to get there just in time to say his line:

"Find out what?"

In the immediate vicinity, Glenn looked on for so long, with jaw slackened, that all of the hair on his shaved head grew back in spades. In the same length of time, an agape Carl Grimes watched, his voice dropping a half-dozen registers, the kid undergoing the entirety of puberty while awaiting what his daddy had to say.

The lawman with so much to lose then turned to the soldier, gave the man another of his dangerous, drowsy scowls.

"They're screwwwing with the wrong steeple."

ALTERNATE ENDING

After, again, the infantry overseer known as Sergeant Abraham tumbled in, gathered himself up to ask the dead-demolishing Deputy, with bated breath:

"Find out what?"

Rick engaged a couple of paces toward the armory, as everyone experienced another birthday waiting for him to speak. Then, finally:

"They're fuhhcking with the wrong steeple."

And it was then, in this weary world of (NO SANCTUARY SPOILERS)…

…of stainless-steel-trough-throat-slashings, and baseball-cap-asshole-would-be-abominable-baby-neck-breakings…

…that the dropping of an F-Bomb would be so much more devastating than the detonation of any A-Bomb or H-Bomb, such that it needed to be edited out and not emerge as the original, canonical utterance of any character in this gritty, miserable reality.


End file.
